


Tread

by sugaplumvisions



Series: Writeober 2019 - KNB Ficlets and Drabbles [17]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Horror, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Southern Gothic, Trans Male Character, trans Kuroko
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 03:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21421507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugaplumvisions/pseuds/sugaplumvisions
Summary: There’s a place down by the river where even angels fear to tread. There’s a copse of trees that God forgot, but the devil sure as hell didn’t.There’s two boys who listen quietly in church, one in the shape of a tall, strong young man, and one in the guise of a girl. One hides the way his eyes slide over the other boys, buries his wrongness in the way he smiles at the pretty girls. One fades into the background, because no one can call you a girl if they can’t see you at all. They find refuge in each other, both from the slurs that fly past them and from their loneliness.
Relationships: Kagami Taiga/Kuroko Tetsuya
Series: Writeober 2019 - KNB Ficlets and Drabbles [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1504883
Kudos: 8





	Tread

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for homophobia, transphobia, and body horror in the end notes.

There’s a place down by the river where even angels fear to tread. There’s a copse of trees that God forgot, but the devil sure as hell didn’t. 

There’s a river that’s the lifeblood of the town, that runs clear down to the Gulf

There’s a town that passes around rumors and is cruel to those who don’t fit in, who don’t toe the line and worship in the way they see fit. 

There’s two boys who listen quietly in church, one in the shape of a tall, strong young man, and one in the guise of a girl. One hides the way his eyes slide over the other boys, buries his wrongness in the way he smiles at the pretty girls. One fades into the background, because no one can call you a girl if they can’t see you at all. They find refuge in each other, both from the slurs that fly past them and from their loneliness. 

There’s two boys down by the river in the blazing heat, sunning themselves on the rocks. They won’t say they love each other, too scared the words will break whatever fragile and nascent thing is between them, but they show their love all the same. 

There’s two boys down by the river, one in the guise of a girl and one who only likes boys, and won’t say they love each other, but they love each other so much their chests hurt. 

Taiga slips into the water like an otter. 

“Come on in,” and here he takes a moment to look around and make sure nobody else is around. “Tetsuya!” he calls. “The water’s fine!” 

Taiga’s stripped down to his skivvies, but Tetsuya keeps his camisole and bloomers on, hiding the small but burgeoning breasts he loathes and the panties he finds so humiliating. 

Tetsuya scoots down on the rock, dips a toe in, and frowns. “The water’s freezing!” 

“It’s not so bad once you get in, I swear,” Taiga says. 

“It’s miserable,” Tetsuya says, and scoots further up the rock, hugging his knees to himself. 

“That’s it, I’m taking drastic measures.” Taiga swims up to Tetsuya and splashes him. Tetsuya squeals as Taiga splashes him, drenching his camisole and bloomers. 

“Taiga! You’re getting me wet!” 

“That’s the point.” Taiga grins and grabs Tetsuya’s ankle, trying to drag him down into the water. Tetsuya lets himself be dragged, spluttering as he’s pulled under the water. 

“There, isn’t that better?” Taiga says as he bobs to the surface. 

“It’s so cold!” Tetsuya grimaces. 

“Give it a minute; it’ll get better.” 

“You never get cold like I do.” 

“You’re so tiny,” Taiga says, wrapping an arm around Tetsuya’s shoulders. “It’s no wonder. Is that better?” 

Tetsuya doesn’t bother to hide the way his breath hitches, the way his eyes go half-lidded for a moment at the touch. 

“You’re cold too, idiot,” he says, but smiles all the same. 

There’s a moment when Taiga wants to lean in, wants to kiss that smile off his face, but the moment passes and he doesn’t, still too scared of what lies between them. 

They swam the afternoon away. And maybe it wasn’t strictly proper for a boy and a “girl” to spend so much time together, to touch each other like that, but Tetsuya had told his parents that he was spending the day with Satsuki, and Taiga’s father was too busy to care where his son went, so they let themselves be together and be brave. “Look!” a voice calls out. “It’s the faggot and the freak!” 

Taiga freezes. He sees a group of teens burst out of the treeline, led by Makoto, a local boy who’d always been the cruelest towards the two of them and anyone who associated with them. 

“He must have thought she was a boy!” one of the other boys says. There is no mirth in the laughter that follows. 

"Leave us alone, you bastards,” Taiga yells back. 

“Why? So you can go back to pretending you’ve got a boyfriend?” 

Taiga’s cheeks flame. He hopes Tetsuya will write it off as being the flush of rage. 

“Taiga,” Tetsuya says, laying a small hand on his shoulder. “We should go.” 

“I don’t want to let these fuckers ruin our day!” 

“They could tell my parents,” Tetsuya says, voice quiet. 

Taiga takes one more rage-filled look at the boys on the other shore before looking away. 

“You’re right,” he mutters. “We should go. There’s nothing left here for us.” 

They climb out of the river, thankfully on the opposite bank from Makoto and his crew, and dress quickly. That’s when the first rock hits. 

“Get ‘em!” Makoto yells to his little band of bastards, and they’re suddenly inundated with a flood of rocks. 

“Run!” Taiga yells. He reaches for Tetsuya’s hand and pulls him along the riverbank, back towards the town. He’s still not dressed yet, having only pulled on his blouse, with no skirt pulled over his sopping bloomers. Tetsuya throws his skirt over his shoulder and sprints along behind Taiga. 

He’s not as fast as Taiga, but Taiga matches his pace, even as the boys sprint along the other riverbank, still throwing rocks at them. One hits Tetsuya in the eyebrow and he hisses, trying to fight back the sting of tears that well up in his eyes. 

“Shit!” Taiga says. He lets go of Tetsuya’s hand and switches sides with him so he’s closer to the boys and the rocks. He grabs Tetsuya’s other hand almost immediately. 

“We should run away from the river,” Tetsuya says between gasps. 

“We’ll get lost,” Taiga says. 

“Lost is better than bleeding,” Tetsuya counters. 

“I hope you have a better sense of direction than me,” Taiga says, and lets Tetsuya drag him away from the river. 

They keep running, knowing eventually Makoto and his crew will either find a bridge or decide to swim the river, so they’d best get as much distance between the two of them and their persecutors as they can. 

If Taiga believed in God as more than a force of hate, he’d thank Him under his breath that he played basketball and could keep running. He'd thank Him for the days him and Tetusya have spent playing pickup games too, keeping him in good enough shape that Taiga hadn’t had to throw him over his shoulders yet. 

Eventually they run into a copse of trees. Their feet crunch over something, and Taiga looks down to see that it’s the picked-clean skeleton of a squirrel. He swallows hard, for some reason feeling that it has to be a bad omen. 

“We shouldn’t be here,” Tetsuya hisses. 

“You’re right, but we are,” Taiga replies. 

“No, I mean we shouldn’t be _here,” _Tetsuya says cryptically. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Don’t you recognize this place? These trees? Didn’t your father tell you never to go there?” 

“Shit.” 

“Yeah,” Tetsuya says. “That sounds about right.” 

They hear yelling behind them. “This way!” 

They take one look at each other and sprint forward. 

“Shit! They went into the Copse!” they hear after a minute more of running, ever-so-faintly. 

“Leave them,” Makoto says. “They’ll get worse than we can give them.” 

They don’t hear any more running, no more crashing through the trees. They stand still and listen, and only hear the faint footsteps on barren ground as the other boys turn around to go home. 

When they turn around to do the same, to find their way out, there is a woman standing in front of them. 

“Woman,” really, is perhaps a misappropriation; it assigns the creature a certain humanity that she seems to be devoid of. Her eyes are black hollows, showing empty bone beneath the skin stretched tautly over her skull like the skin of a drum, illuminating every nook and cranny of the bone. Her hair is long and matted where it drapes over her shoulders. She is draped in a simple, filthy cloth, one that exposes wiry, muscular arms ending in claws. It comes to mid-thigh, leaving bare legs that terminate in cloven, dirt-covered hooves. 

She smiles, revealing teeth that were too sharp to be human, teeth that make Taiga step forward between Tetsuya and the creature as if he’d be able to offer any kind of protection. “What brings you to my abode?” she said, with a voice that hissed out of her like air from a punctured tire. 

“We’re lost,” Taiga says. 

“We were chased,” Tetsuya says. 

“Which is the truth?” she asks. 

The two boys look at each other. 

“Both,” Tetsuya says, confidently. “We were chased here. We didn’t realize we’d intruded until it was too late to turn back.” 

“Why did you truly come here?” the creature asks. “No one ends up here by accident. They are all drawn by something in their lives that is so intolerable that they cannot help but end up here. If you tell the truth, you may yet survive.” 

Taiga and Tetsuya exchange glances again, trying to decide whether to tell her the truth. In the end, they blurt it out. 

“I’m gay,” Taiga says. 

“I’m a boy,” Tetsuya says. 

The creature grinned wider. 

“Now we can begin. Taiga,” she says, and Taiga is uncomfortably aware that he’d never given her his name. “Would you like this taken away from you?” 

Taiga sets his jaw and looks her in where her eyes should be. “I ain’t broken,” he says. “Don’t try to fix me.” 

The creature laughs delightedly. “What a clever boy!”

“Don’t take away my love,” he insists. “Please. I’d rather be like this than lose that.” 

It’s the closest he’s gotten to admitting that he’s in love with Tetsuya. 

“I could take away the jeers, take away the boys chasing you and throwing rocks. I could make everyone forget they ever questioned who you loved.”

Taiga reaches up when he feels moisture on his cheeks. He realizes he’s crying. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “What will happen to them?” 

“You have to choose,” the creature says. “You have to accept a boon before you can leave.” 

He takes a deep breath, and nods. “Make them forget.” 

She laughs again. “I will.” Her smile turns the slightest bit sinister. “Be more careful, little Taiga. Don’t make them question again.” She turns her head just a bit, to where Tetsuya is standing. 

“Now, Tetsuya.” 

She barely gets it through before Tetsuya speaks. 

“Make me a boy,” he says. 

“But you already are one, little one,” the creature says. 

“Make me look like one. Make everyone see me as one. Can you do that?” 

“Tetsuya, are you sure this is the best way?” Taiga hisses. Tetsuya pays him no mind. 

“Make me a boy,” he repeats. “In everyone’s eyes.” 

The creature snaps her fingers and Tetsuya is naked. He begins to change. He screams in agony as the flesh of his hips and breasts peel away, leaving him straight up and down, curveless. Taiga runs to his side and grasps at his hand. 

“Tetsuya! Tetsuya are you okay?” 

he creature reaches for the shed flesh and pushes it into her mouth with the clumsy movements of a feeding frenzy, chewing with relish. 

“Tasty, little Tetsuya,” the creature says. “Your agony…delicious.” 

“Leave him alone!” Taiga says. 

“No,” Tetsuya says. “Let her…” He screams again as his shoulders begin to stretch and widen, and something begins to sprout between his legs. 

“Just one final touch,” the creature says once he’s finished changing, reaching out for Tetsuya. 

“Don’t you dare touch him,” Taiga says. 

“Please,” Tetsuya says between pained gasps. “Let her remake me.” 

She takes one claw and swipes it around his head. Pale blue hair falls in cascades onto the forest floor, leaving him with a jagged but ultimately masculine haircut. She snaps her fingers and he’s suddenly clothed in boys’ clothes. 

“There you are,” she says. “Just as you wanted to be. Now run along home, little boys.” 

“I think it’s that way,” Tetsuya says as Taiga tries to keep his eyes off him. He’s beautiful like this. He always has been, but there’s something about the way he settles into his new body, something about the way he carries himself now, that’s irresistible. 

“Past her?” Taiga asks. He looks up and—suddenly, the creature is gone. 

“We should go,” Tetsuya says. 

“Yeah,” Taiga says, taking his hand. “We should.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: Kuroko and Kagami are chased and have rocks thrown at them because they're queer. Kagami is called a f*ggot. They mock Kuroko for being transgender, though they don't have the words to describe it. 
> 
> Kuroko transitions magically. The transformation is painful and grotesque. There is also a bit of cannibalism from a demon (of flesh that fell off in the transformation).


End file.
